Everything was going smoothly. Serbia, on its knees, had just
sold Milosevic to the International Criminal Tribune for a fistful of dollars
(most of which turned out to be earmarked to pay debts going back to Tito's
time). NATO was expanding eastwards toward a powerless Russia. Saddam Hussein
could be safely bombed whenever one felt like it. Invaded by UCK, Macedonia was
obliged to accept the farce of a disarmament of that same UCK by the very ones
who armed it in the first place. The Palestinian territories were under tight
control while their leaders were assassinated by smart bombs. For the past few
years, stockholders had been making record profits. The political left had died
out and all political parties had rallied to neoliberalism and "humanitarian"
interventionism. In short, as certain commentators put it, we were living in
peace.
Then suddenly shock, surprise, horror: the greatest power of
all times, the only truly universal empire struck in its very heart, at the
center of its wealth and power. A unique and all-powerful electronic spying
network, unparalleled security measures, a staggering defense budget -- none of
this was of any use in preventing the catastrophe.
Let us be perfectly clear. We do not share the attitude
expressed by Madeleine Albright when she was asked whether pursuing the embargo
against Iraq was worth the price of half a million Iraqi children who have died:
"this is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it", she replied.
The massacre of innocent civilians is never acceptable. But this does not mean
we should not try to understand the underlying meaning of that incredible
attack.
The American pacifist A. J. Muste once remarked that the
problem in every war was posed by the winning side: the victor had learned that
violence succeeded. The whole of postwar history illustrates the pertinence of
that observation. In the United States, the War Department was renamed Defense
Department, precisely when there was no direct danger threatening the country,
and one government after the other launched campaigns of military intervention
and political destabilisation in the guise of containing communism -- against
moderately nationalist governments such as that of Goulart in Brazil, Mossadegh
in Iran or Arbenz in Guatemala. To limit ourselves to the present, let us
examine a few questions rarely raised concerning Western, especially American,
policy.
- The Kyoto protocol: the principal United States objection
is not on scientific grounds, but merely that "it is bad for our economy". What
are people who work 12 hours a day for slave wages to make of such a
reaction?
- The Durban conference. The West rejects the slightest
thought of reparations for slavery and colonialism. But isn't it clear that the
State of Israel functions as a form of reparations for anti-Semitic
persecutions, except that in this case the price is paid by the Palestinian
Arabs for the crimes committed by Europeans? And isn't it obvious that this
shift of responsibility must be felt as a sort of racism by the victims of
colonialism?
- Macedonia: here is a country that the West pushed into
independence in order to weaken Serbia and whose government has always
faithfully followed Western orders. As a result it has been subjected to attacks
by terrorists armed by NATO and coming from territory under NATO control. How
does this look to Slavic Orthodox peoples, especially after the expulsion, as
NATO looks on, of the Serbian population of Kosovo and the eradication of a
large part of its cultural heritage?
- Afghanistan: it is too quickly forgotten that Osama Bin
Laden was trained and armed by the Americans, who openly admit that they were
using Afghanistan to destabilize the USSR even before the Soviet intervention.
How many people have died in the game that former President Carter's adviser,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls "the great chessboard"? And how many terrorists, in
Asia, in Central America, in the Balkans, or in the Middle East, are left to run
loose after having been used by the "Free World"?
- Iraq: for ten years the population has been strangled by an
embargo that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths -- of civilian victims.
All because Iraq tried to recover the oil wells that were de facto confiscated
from them by the British. Let us just compare the treatment given Israel for its
totally illegal occupation of territories conquered in 1967. Is it really likely
that the notion, generally accepted in the West, that Saddam Hussein is to blame
for everything, makes much sense in the Arab-Muslim world?
By pure coincidence, the September 11 attacks took place on
the anniversary of the overthrow of Allende, which not only marked (a fact
easily forgotten) the installation of the first neoliberal government, that of
General Pinochet, but also the start of a broad movement against national and
independent movements in the Third World which was to lead those countries to
bow to the dictates of the IMF.
This is why we suspect that in Latin America, in Indonesia,
in Iran, in ruined and humiliated Russia, in China where nobody is fooled by
attempts to destabilize this emerging giant, as well as in the Muslim world, the
September 11 tragedy will cause people to shed little more than crocodile
tears.
Of course there will be shouts of indignation and messages of
sympathy. There will be applause for "firm responses" when they occur (will they
destroy a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan or bomb the civilian population of an
Arab country?). Large numbers of intellectuals will be found to produce clever
analyses full of false analogies connecting these attacks to whatever it is they
are against: Saddam Hussein, Kadhafi, Western pacifists and anti-imperialists,
the Palestinian liberation movement or even China, Russia or North Korea. It
will be repeated that such barbarism is totally alien to us: after all, we
prefer to bomb from high altitude and kill gradually by means of embargos. But
none of that will solve any basic problem. There is no use attacking revolt
itself. What must be attacked is the suffering that produces revolt.
Those attacks will have at least two negative political
consequences. For one, the American population, already disturbingly
nationalist, will "rally round the flag", as they put it, supporting their
government however barbaric its policy. Americans will be more than ever
determined to "protect our way of life" without asking the price to be paid by
the rest of the planet. The timid movements of dissent that have emerged since
Seattle will be marginalized if not criminalized.
On the other hand, millions of people who have been defeated,
humiliated and crushed by the United States and the world it dominates will be
tempted to see terrorism as the only weapon really capable of striking the
Empire. This is why a truly political struggle -- not violence -- against the
cultural, economic and above all military domination by a small minority over
the vast majority of humanity is more necessary than ever before.
Terror Attacks of September 11,
2001
The Black Radical Congress
During this extremely sad and traumatic time, we extend our
sincere and heartfelt condolences to the families and loved ones of all those
who lost their life on September 11th. We also wish for the speedy and full
recovery of those who were injured, and we hope and pray that in the aftermath
of the attacks, rescue crews can find as many people still alive as
possible.
The Black Radical Congress (BRC) strongly condemns the
horrific terror attacks which occurred on September 11th, 2001. The brazen
murder of countless thousands of civilians cannot be supported or
condoned.
It is without question that US imperialism has brought
genocidal levels of death and destruction to people around the world. Whether
one looks at the situation in Iraq with the continual blockade and air
bombardments, the situation in Palestine where the US continues to give
virtually uncritical support to the Israelis in their national oppression of
the Palestinians, the economic blockade against Cuba which aims to undermine
its economy and weaken its population, or any number of other places, one
clearly sees the callousness and evil intent with which US imperialism treats
the lives and property of others, especially non-white peoples around the
globe.
Yet, even with a firm understanding of the causes of the
desperation, fury, and hatred of US imperialism, turning to terrorism to fight
global oppression and exploitation is not an acceptable strategy. A clear and
unambiguous distinction must be made between radical/revolutionary political
action on the one hand, and terrorism on the other, regardless of whether the
causes that *appeared* to inspire the terrorist action(s) are just. Open and
unmitigated attacks on civilian targets do not advance radical/revolutionary
causes and must be repudiated. Rather, such attacks inevitably antagonize the
populace, weaken any existing popular support, and help legitimize heightened
levels of repression by the imperialist state against *all*
progressive/radical/revolutionary political activity, including increased
restrictions on the civil rights of the people.
We already hear, in the voices of those in power, calls for
war and vengeance. War and vengeance without a precise target, but striking
out blindly, is nothing more than self-serving jingoism. Given the track
record of the US, this could include indiscriminate bombings or missile
attacks, such as the attack against the Sudanese pharmaceutical laboratory two
years ago, which was later found *not* to have been connected with any sort of
terrorist activity.
The dangers presented by the September 11th terrorist acts
do not restrict themselves to the external threat. We hear on television and
radio calls for changing the laws and regulations in order to make it easier
to conduct surveillance and to carry-out covert operations against potential
opponents of the US. Rather than accomplishing anything in terms of reducing
the threat of terrorism, such steps will eliminate basic civil liberties and
strengthen the existing tendency toward a racist and classist police state.
The police are already out of control and on the rampage in communities across
the country. We cannot afford to further unleash their undemocratic and
frequently murderous behavior in the name of national security.
We should add here that the terrorist attacks have also
brought potential damage to the growing anti-capitalist globalization
movement. The ruling class has been making noise for months about the
demonstrations that accompany the gatherings of capitalist globalizers. They
have inferred that these demonstrations will get increasingly out of control.
There is no question that the events of September 11th will be used as a
pretext to both discourage activity, as well as to clamp down on any and all
popular outrage with neo-liberal globalization.
It is also critical in moments such as these that we as
human beings fight and resist popular impulses toward scape-goating and
racism. From almost the moment of the first attack on the World Trade Center,
there has been an assumption floated within the media that Arabs or Muslim
fundamentalists were behind the attacks. The reaction to the attacks is
reminiscent of what we witnessed immediately after the Oklahoma City bombings.
There was a widespread assumption that Arabs or Muslims were behind the attack
on the Federal Office building. Few establishment observers expected, or led
any of the public to expect, that the terrorist could be -- and was -- a
homegrown, white American right-winger.
Therefore, it is important to reserve judgment until a more
thorough investigation is conducted. This is particularly important given the
anti-Palestinian/anti-Arab/anti-Muslim bias of the media. The automatic
assumption of the US media is that Palestinians specifically, and Arabs
generally, are animals, or at best, fanatics with no concern for human life.
The just and righteous Palestinian cause is rarely given credible time, and
when offered, generally dismissed by allegedly objective (but really
pro-Israeli) commentators. Therefore, in the current situation of horror
following these criminal acts, we must actively oppose any and all witch-
hunting and stereotyping which is bound to emerge.
Yet another danger we currently face will be xenophobia
and, general anti-immigrant sentiment. This will almost inevitably be directed
at immigrants of color and particularly those who "look" like they might be of
Middle Eastern (North African) origin. The attacks on immigrants and the
condemnation of entire communities must be stopped before they escalate out of
control. We already see some of this happening with numerous reports of
anonymous death threats sent to Arab and Muslim institutions, as well as the
spray painting of racist slogans and direct, personal threats and attacks on
individuals who are assumed to be from the Middle East (North Africa). We call
on all clear-thinking people to be especially vigilant at this time in making
sure that in the aftermath of this tragedy, another tragedy born of pain,
anger, and hatred does not occur. True anti-racism may require us to put
ourselves at risk physically in order to defend Arabs and Muslims from
unwarranted attacks.
Lastly, Black America must not condone or be indifferent to
the horrendous loss of human life resulting from this tragedy, nor can we
allow these horrific acts to be used as an excuse to further repress
Arab-Americans, Muslims, or those perceived to be opponents of capitalist
globalization. As a people that has survived over 400 years of genocidal
oppression on these shores, we are all too familiar with the human suffering
caused by both terrorism and racial hatred. >From the amputations,
beatings, and rapes of Chattel Slavery, to the New York City Draft Riots of
1863, to the post- Reconstruction terrorism of the Klu Klux Klan, to the Tulsa
Race Riots of 1921, to the government sponsored Counter-Intelligence Program
(COINTELPRO) of the 1960s, to the contemporary state-sanctioned police murder
and brutality we are fighting today, we as Black people have lots of
experience with the horrors of terrorism in the US, as it has too frequently
been directed against us. That is why we must show our full and unqualified
support and compassion for all those suffering as a result of this horrible
tragedy, most of whom have come to experience terrorism for the first time, as
we continue our 400+ year struggle to rid ourselves of this evil, both
domestically and around the world.
Terror Attacks:
New to Us, Not to
Afghans
James Ingalls
Like a subliminal "Wanted" poster, TV newscasts flash
images of the destroyed Twin Towers, followed at longer intervals by the face
of Osama bin Laden. The disclaimer that we still have no idea who is
responsible for the brutal attacks in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh
seems weak in comparison with this visual "evidence". Unlikely to be accorded
anything approaching due process, the suspect of the decade will probably find
his interests under violent attack by the US and NATO within the next few
days. It is too much to hope for no civilian casualties, as GW Bush fulfils
his promise to "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these
acts and those who harbored them," implying that the people of Afghanistan
will soon be subjected to aerial bombardment. The US will likely
"validate...the logic of terrorism" (Human Rights Watch), following the dictum
that violence and terror are the proper responses to violence and terror.
Michael Sheehan, the State Department's Counterterrorism
Coordinator, has made a big deal about a "geographic shift" in terrorist
activity from the Middle East to South Asia. Sheehan attributes the shift to
the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s: "This
war destroyed the government and civil society of Afghanistan, at the same
time bringing arms, fighters from around the world, and narcotics traffickers
to the region." Sheehan eliminates any trace of human involvement--"this war"
brought arms, fighters, and narco-traffickers to Afghanistan, destroying civil
society. What Washington tends to conveniently ignore is that bin Laden and
the rest of the extremist terrorists empowered to fight in Afghanistan were
taught "the logic of terrorism" by our own Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA assembled a terror network that remains a cause of
misery worldwide. CIA Director William Casey called it "the kind of thing we
should be doing." According to standard sources, aid to extremist groups in
Afghanistan was a response to the Soviet invasion. The truth is that President
Carter gave the green light for covert support to the Mujaheddin six months
_before_ the December 1979 invasion. In the words of then National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, a major architect of Carter's policy, they were
"drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap." The US supported seven
fundamentalist extremist groups throughout the 1980s and into the early 90s
with cash, sophisticated weapons, and training to the tune of $5
billion--according to official figures. The secret Black Budget of the CIA
reportedly quadrupled to $36 billion per year when Reagan became president in
1980, and some of this money went to support secret operations in Afghanistan.
Some of the earliest training exercises took place inside the US, including
rifle shooting at the High Rock gun club in Naugtuck, Connecticut. More
technical training took place at the CIA's Camp Peary, nicknamed "The Farm,"
northeast of Williamsburg, Virginia. Among the topics covered by training
sessions were surveillance and countersurveillance, counter-terrorism,
counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations.
Around the same time, a source of private funding was
sought for the war. Osama bin Laden, a man with "impeccable Saudi credentials"
(his father's construction company had just been awarded a contract to rebuild
and restore the holy sites in Mecca and Medina) was given "free rein in
Afghanistan" by the CIA. Using his share of his family's business empire, he
built training camps and airplane landing strips, and carved underground
bunkers in the mountains of Afghanistan, all with Washington's approval. Just
across the border, bin Laden's base in Pakistan was the Binoori mosque in
Karachi. The prayer leader at this mosque was one Mullah Mohammed Omar, now
"supreme leader" of the Taliban.
After the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, the Mujaheddin groups
began turning their US-supplied weapons on each other, and on the civilian
population of Afghanistan. In 1990, the CIA began supplying the Mujaheddin
directly, rather than using Pakistan's ISI intelligence service as a conduit.
According to then chief of ISI's Afghanistan branch, Mohammad Youssaf, the
CIA's aim was to "play on differences between the various factions and their
commanders," in an effort to "curb the power" of the factions and make way for
an unknown "Transition Regime," perhaps the Taliban.
The CIA's propping up of the fundamentalist terrorists in
Afghanistan began to show its consequences during this period. The first
victims were the people of Afghanistan. The group getting the most US aid, led
by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, began rocket shelling Kabul. A close friend of bin
Laden, Hekmatyar was understood by his benefactors to be "a nut, an extremist,
and a very violent man" (US ambassador to Afghanistan Robert Neumann). In the
1970s he gained notoriety for throwing acid on the faces of women who refused
to wear the veil. Journalist Michael Griffin writes of Kabul under Hekmatyar's
onslaught: "no city since the end of the Second World War - except Sarajevo -
had suffered the same ferocity of jugular violence as Kabul from 1992 to 1996.
Sarajevo was almost a side-show by comparison and, at least, it wasn't
forgotten." From 1990-1994 45,000 civilians were killed, 300,000 had fled to
Pakistan, and Kabul was "turned into a rubble resembling Dresden after the
fire-bombing." Most Afghans are now without livelihood, reduced to begging
from international aid agencies. They currently live under the fascistic
Taliban, who keep bin Laden safe.
Terrorists trained and armed by the CIA to fight in
Afghanistan have since been implicated in attacks on the World Trade Center in
1993, and in US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which killed
hundreds of people. These efforts pale in comparison to the recent destruction
in Manhattan, Washington, and Pittsburgh. If proven guilty in fair trial, bin
Laden should certainly be held accountable. But the Afghan people, no
strangers to the terrorism of bin Laden and his friends, should not be made to
pay further for the consequences of our actions. It was our officials who
originally unleashed these forces of destruction on Afghanistan. Perhaps the
faces of Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Casey, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan
should be on the TV screen too, next to Osama bin Laden's and the empty holes
in the ground where twin towers stood.
The author is on the Board of Directors of the Afghan
Women's Mission, and is a Staff Scientist at the California Institute of
Technology.
The awesome cruelty
of a
doomed people
By Robert
Fisk
So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the
Middle East - the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the Balfour declaration,
Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of
Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation
of Arab land - all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a
crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome
cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair - is it moral - to write this so soon,
without proof, without a shred of evidence, when the last act of barbarism in
Oklahoma turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is.
America is at war and, unless I am grotesquely mistaken, many thousands more
are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of
us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamed this
nightmare.
And yes, Osama bin Laden comes to mind, his money, his
theology, his frightening dedication to destroy American power. I have sat in
front of bin Laden as he described how his men helped to destroy the Russian
army in Afghanistan and thus the Soviet Union. Their boundless confidence
allowed them to declare war on America. But this is not the war of democracy
vs terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming hours and
days. It is also about American missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and
US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American
shells crashing into a village called Qana a few days later and about a
Lebanese militia - paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally - hacking and
raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.
No, there is no doubting the utter, indescribable evil of
what has happened in the United States. That Palestinians could celebrate the
massacre of 20,000, perhaps 35,000 innocent people is not only a symbol of
their despair but of their political immaturity, of their failure to grasp
what they had always been accusing their Israeli enemies of doing: acting
disproportionately. But we were warned. All the years of rhetoric, all the
promises to strike at the heart of America, to cut off the head of "the
American snake'' we took for empty threats. How could a backward,
conservative, undemocratic and corrupt group of regimes and small, violent
organizations fulfil such preposterous promises? Now we know.
And in the hours that followed yesterday's annihilation, I
began to remember those other extraordinary, unbelievable assaults upon the US
and its allies, miniature now by comparison with yesterdays' casualties. Did
not the suicide bombers who killed 241 American servicemen and almost 100
french paratroops in Beirut on 23 October 1983, time their attacks with
unthinkable precision?
It was just 7 seconds between the Marine bombing and the
destruction of the French three miles away. Then there were the attacks on US
bases in Saudi Arabia, and last year's attempt - almost successful it now
turns out - to sink the USS Cole in Aiden. And then how easy was our failure
to recognize the new weapon of the Middle East which neither Americans or any
other Westerners could equal: the despair-driven, desperate suicide
bomber.
All America's power, wealth - and arrogance, the Arabs will
be saying - could not defend the greatest power the world has ever known from
this destruction.
For journalists, even those who have literally walked
through the blood of the Middle East, words dry up here. Awesome, terrible,
unspeakable, unforgivable; in the coming days, these words will become water
in the desert. And there will be, naturally and inevitably, and quite
immorally, an attempt to obscure the historical wrongs and the blood and the
injustices that lie behind yesterday's firestorms. We will be told about
"mindless terrorism'', the "mindless" bit being essential if we are not to
realise how hated America has become in the land of the birth of three great
religions.
Ask an Arab how he responds to 20 or 30 thousand innocent
deaths and he or she will respond as good and decent people should, that it is
an unspeakable crime. But they will ask why we did not use such words about
the sanctions that have destroyed the lives of perhaps half a million children
in Iraq, why we did not rage about the 17,500 civilians killed in Israel's
1982 invasion of Lebanon, why we allowed one nation in the Middle East to
ignore UN Security Council resolutions but bombed and sanctioned all others
who did. And those basic reasons why the Middle East caught fire last
September - the Israeli occupation of Arab land, the dispossession of
Palestinians, the bombardments and state sponsored executions, the Israeli
tortures ... all these must be obscured lest they provide the smallest
fractional reason for yesterday's mass savagery.
No, Israel was not to blame - that we can be sure that
Saddam Hussein and the other grotesque dictators will claim so - but the
malign influence of history and our share in its burden must surely stand in
the dark with the suicide bombers. Our broken promises, perhaps even our
destruction of the Ottoman Empire, led inevitably to this tragedy. America has
bankrolled Israel's wars for so many years that it believed this would be
cost-free. No longer so. It would be an act of extraordinary courage and
wisdom if the United States was to pause for a moment and reflect upon its
role in the world, the indifference of its government to the suffering of
Arabs, the indolence of its current president.
But of course, the United States will want to strike back
against "world terror'', who can blame them? Indeed, who could ever point the
finger at Americans now for using that pejorative and sometimes racist word
"terrorism''? There will be those swift to condemn any suggestion that we
should look for real historical reasons for an act of violence on this
world-war scale. But unless we do so, then we are facing a conflict the like
of which we have not seen since Hitler's death and the surrender of Japan.
Korea, Vietnam, is beginning to fade away in comparison.
Eight years ago, I helped to make a television series that
tried to explain why so many Muslims had come to hate the West. Last night, I
remembered some of those Muslims in that film, their families burnt by
American-made bombs and weapons. They talked about how no one would help them
but God. Theology vs technology, the suicide bomber against the nuclear power.
Now we have learnt what this means.
THE SPEECH
GEORGE W. BUSH
COULD GIVE:
By Doug Morris
Good evening, my fellow Americans.
St. Augustine said that “hope has two beautiful daughters:
anger and courage. Anger at the way things are, and courage to struggle to
create things as they should be.” These acts perpetrated against humanity
today were acts of anger at the way things are. They were not courageous acts,
but horrendous atrocities, acts of anger laced with hate. Our first response
must be support and compassion for the victims, and families and friends of
the victims. But, in addition, we should ask ourselves “what conditions led
these fellow humans to develop such anger and hatred, led them to commit such
abominably inhumane acts, and why was it directed at these particular targets
in the United States?”
We should not repress our anger and indignation at these
hateful and callous acts, or our anger and indignation at all hateful and
callous acts, but our anger must be accompanied not by hate, but with love,
and by the courage to struggle to create a more just world, and THAT my fellow
Americans will require a major effort to question, understand, challenge,
change and raise OUR national consciousness. Please, my fellow Americans,
listen with open ears, open minds and open hearts.
While no loving and decent human will tolerate acts of
terror, we must try to understand the extremely difficult question: why? For
example, what is the symbolic significance of the Pentagon and the World Trade
Center in the eyes of the world? And here, my fellow Americans we must search
deep into our own history, our own policies, our own pursuits, our own
impositions, and, our own hearts. It is painful, but, let us be blunt: the war
against terrorism has begun, violently. The two most potent symbols of global
military and economic violence, global military and economic terrorism, have
been struck. These were cowardly and unconscionable acts, to be sure, and, as
in most acts of terror, the innocent suffer most, the working class, the
toiling class. We must launch a war against terrorism, non-violently. A.J.
Muste, committed pacifist, advised us that in a world built on violence “we
must be revolutionaries before we are pacifists.” That is, we must work to
abolish the institutions of violence, non-violently.
However, make no mistake, my fellow Americans, the Pentagon
IS the center of world military violence and terrorism. The US is the world’s
leading exporter of tools of death and destruction. Let us be honest, we have
been committed to violence as a way to address international conflicts for
many, many years. And a PARTIAL list of the results of our commitment to
violence includes: Korea – millions killed. Vietnam – millions killed.
Cambodia – hundreds of thousands killed. Laos – hundreds of thousands killed.
Iraq – hundreds of thousands killed. Guatemala – hundreds of thousands killed.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki – hundreds of thousands killed. East Timor – hundreds
of thousands killed. Nicaragua – tens of thousands killed. El Salvador – tens
of thousands killed. Colombia – tens of thousands killed. Dominican
Republic – thousands killed. Somalia – thousands killed. Haiti – thousands
killed. Yugoslavia – thousands killed. Panama – hundreds killed. And let us
not forget the ways in which we have mistreated the Cuban people for over 40
years now with our embargo and repeated acts of terrorism. Let us remember my
father’s words during the buildup to the US attack on Iraq: “there will be no
negotiations…what we say goes.” “No negotiations” simply means we prefer
violence. “What we say goes” expresses the arrogance, chauvinism and mystique
of invincibility that has separated the US from the world. Both views express
the notion that the US is above international law and the UN Charter, outside
the family of nations. Is it any wonder that Harvard professor Samuel
Huntington said that in the eyes of most of the world the US is seen as “THE
rogue superpower,” considered “THE single greatest external threat to their
societies”? The world quakes in its boots wondering when we will attack, and
what form of violence will ensue: cruise missiles, helicopter gunships,
chemical or biological agents, nuclear bombs, F18’s, F22’s, B52’s, fumigation
campaigns, IMF/World Bank “Structural Adjustment Programs,” or “Austerity
Programs,” embargoes, sanctions, disappearances, assassinations, massacres,
tortures, cultural cooptation or erasure, etc., etc., etc.
The Bible warns us: “what ye sew, ye shall reap.”
Today, sadly, we have experienced what we have sewn on much of the
world. Today, as a country, we have learned that raining death and destruction
on another country creates a toll far higher than simply destroyed buildings
and dead bodies. Today our freedom came under attack. We thought we were free
to impose military and economic violence anywhere we chose, with impunity. The
freedom from impunity appears to no longer exist. The World Court attempted to
sanction the US for our commitment to violence but the Reagan Administration
claimed that the World Court had no jurisdiction over our actions. Yes, we
have been, and we are a rogue state, and, my fellow Americans, it must stop!
Tonight, my fellow Americans we must raise a call of
humility, a humility that does not in any way diminish humanity, but a
humility that raises the respect for, and dignity of, all people, a humility
that allows us to celebrate all human life. It is time that we joined the
world, not as its major purveyor of violence and destruction, but as a
peaceful participant who will work to end violence, end racism, end classism,
end sexism, rather than increase them. The proposed Pentagon budget, the
“violence” budget, for next year is $330 billion dollars. I am tonight
proposing an immediate 50% decrease in this spending that promotes violence,
and calling for a redistribution those funds to help ameliorate problems of
hunger, poverty and poor-health around the world. It is a call to reach
out with love, and a call to find the courage to struggle to create a more
just, peaceful, healthful and equitable world, a world in which human
creativity is celebrated rather than the human capacity for great violence.
Tonight we must call on the world to forgive us OUR sins,
forgive us OUR sordid and calamitous acts of violence that we have pursued
without pause for over 50 years. Let this be the beginning of our
reconciliation with the world. We now, to some degree, understand the pain,
misery and suffering we have caused, the turmoil we have perpetrated, the hate
we have elicited, the destruction we have imparted, the physical, emotional,
psychological and spiritual scars and unconscionable hurt we have created and
that much of the world has endured because of our rapacious and destructive
pursuit of wealth, power and privilege at the expense of human concerns and
human lives. We humbly beg the forgiveness of all humanity, as we pray that
you will offer your support, your compassion, your understanding, and your
love in our time of suffering, mourning and loss.
This is not a time, as it is never a time, to seek
vengeance, but a time to seek the courage to forgive, to harbor the power of
anger to be used in acts of love, and to uncover insights that will allow us
to direct our indignation at the institutions of power, violence and greed,
many of which, sadly, are centered in the US, and begin to transform them in
order to increase our love for the victims of that power, violence and greed,
including those who died and were injured in the attacks on the Pentagon and
the World Trade Center.
When I attended the G8 meetings in Genoa recently I saw a
banner in the street that said “you are 8, we are 6 billion,” and it struck me
deeply. We have pursued for too long the interests of the few at the expense
of the many. Wealth, privilege and power inequalities exacerbate every day. We
have created, protected, endorsed and now imposed on the rest of the world an
economic system, symbolized by the World Trade Center, and protected by the
Pentagon, that must produce and expand in order to profit and survive, an
economic system that treats everything as a commodity to be exploited whether
it is water, food, air, soil, the rest of the environment, animals, fish, or
our fellow humans, a system that puts corporate profit interests above human
interests. This must stop. We, who represent and serve power, should have
listened sooner. Let this horrible tragedy serve as our wake up call. Let us
begin tonight to transform this monster before it is too late. This act of
terror, infamous and abominable, will pale in comparison to the growing
terrors of increasing global militarism of which we are the primary cause,
increased global warming of which we are the primary cause, and intensifying
environmental destruction of which we are the primary cause and which may soon
make much of the world uninhabitable for humans, and surely increase human
suffering, misery and death.
If we are to overcome these acts of terror, and more
importantly prevent future acts of terror against humanity, we must act out of
a sense of hope and faith that the future is unfinished, that it is there to
be created; and, we must be driven by a judicious anger at the way things are,
anger at the monster we have created, anger that can be harbored in momentous
acts of love, and the courage to struggle in cooperation, understanding,
support and solidarity with the rest of humanity to create a world in which
all will be happy to live.
Tonight, and in the days and weeks to come, we must find
the courage to not only reach out with love and understanding, but to find the
courage to self-reflect honestly about what WE have done to the world so that
we can understand why things are the way they are, and what we can and will do
to struggle to create things as they should be – a world of less violence and
greater peace; a world of diminished arrogance and greater humility; a world
where more people do not die of hunger every two years than were killed in
both World Wars combined, but a world in which all people have access to the
great and nourishing bounties of the earth; a world of less disease and
greater health; a world of less hate and greater love; a world of less
vengeance and greater understanding; a world of less greed and greater
sharing; a world of less destruction and greater creativity; a world of less
disparity and greater equality; a world of less fundamentalism and more
progressivism; a world of less mysticism and more humanism; a world of less
criminality and greater justice; a world of less separatism and more
solidarity; a world in which we live both an examined life and a committed
life; a world of less militarism and more artistry; a world of less
vilification and more celebration; a world in which life is worth living; a
world in which we understand well the lesson of Rousseau who said “the fruits
of our labor belong to us; the fruits of the earth belong to everyone; and,
the world itself belongs to no one.”
So, in closing, my fellow Americans, allow us to support
one another in our quest through hope, and anger, and courage, to make love
our aim during this time of crisis, and in the future. And, let us remember
and reflect upon the words stated in Corinthians 13:1-3: “though I may speak
with the voice of angels; though I may understand all the mysteries; though I
may have all the knowledge; though I may give all to feed the poor; though I
may give my body to be burned…if I have not love, I have nothing at all.”
Thank you. Good night, and blessings, peace, justice,
solidarity and love for all humanity.
And now, my fellow Americans, in order to assist us in
developing a much deeper understanding of all of these issues, I have invited
MIT professor Noam Chomsky to share his views. Professor Chomsky will have
unlimited time. Thank you. Professor Chomsky, welcome…
America Under Attack":
Guilty Or Not, Here
We Come
By Danny
Schechter
Walking home through empty streets, as New York shut down
early on the day of the World Trade Towers apocalypse, one was struck at how
dazed and stunned people seemed. There was an eerie silence punctuated by
ambulances and police cars racing from place to place. Cops guarded post
offices, police stations and the bus terminal, as if the terrorists would be
back. The mayor gave press conferences from "a secret location" as if the
Osama Bin Laden brigade had targeted him, clearly a conceit wrapped up as a
security consideration.
I had spent the morning following events on the web and the
radio. At home, I was finally able to experience the day's turmoil that many
media outlets were saying had "changed America forever" the way most Americans
were--on TV. I watched for five hours, jumping from channel to channel,
network to network. It was, of course, wall to wall catastrophe, with each
outlet featuring its own "exclusive coverage.” Some credited to others but
each with somewhat distinctive angles of the same scene--that jet plane
tearing through the World Trade Center. And when we weren't seeing that
horrendous image being recycled endlessly, used as what we in the TV business
used to call "wallpaper" or B-roll, other equally compelling images were on
the screen: the Pentagon on fire, huge clouds of smoke coming out of the
buildings, buildings collapsing, people jumping from high floors and running
in the streets. It was on for hours, over and over again, awakening outrage
and then, oddly numbing it by overexposure.
The reporting focused first on the facts, the chronology of
planes hijacked and national symbols attacked. And then the parade of "expert"
interviews began, featuring virtually the same group of former government
officials and terrorism specialists on each show. Even Ronald Reagan's
favorite novelist Tom Clancy was given airtime to bang the drum for giving the
military and CIA everything it says it will need to strike back. He was on no
doubt because for many, these events seemed like a case of reality catching up
with fiction.
You could imagine the show bookers all working overtime
from the same Roladex, shuttling these pundits-for-all-seasons from studio to
studio, from CNN to Jim Lehrer's News Hour to CBS and back again. How many
times have we seen these soundalike soundbite artists like former Secretary of
State Lawrence Eagleburger and generals like Norman Schwartzkopf waxing tough
for the cameras? They were itching for "action."
I heard no one saying that violence breeds violence or that
a massive retaliation may only invite more of the same. The only critical edge
to the coverage involved raising the question about why so many official
predictions about imminent terrorist threats went unresponded to for so long.
These concerns were raised, but quickly sidelined by discussions of national
complacency and/or naïveté about the world. How the U.S. intelligence
apparatus could have missed this was taken only as evidence that it needs more
money, not a different policy. No mention was made of the cutbacks in
international news coverage that keeps so many Americans so out of touch with
global events.
Suddenly, we had moved from the stage of facts to the realm
of opinion and endless speculation about what America would do and, then, what
America MUST do. The anchors were touched when members of Congress
spontaneously erupted into a bipartisan rendition of "God Bless America" on
the Capitol steps. They paused reverentially to go live to the White House for
a presidential address that turned out to be five minutes of banalities and
rally-round-the-flag reassurances. Who was it that called patriotism the last
refuge of scoundrels? The news anchors certainly never used that line.
Missing was any discussion of possible motives by the
alleged terrorists, why would they do it and why now? What was their political
agenda? There was no mention of September 11th as the anniversary of the
failed Camp David accords. There was certainly no mention of the fact that
State terrorism by countries be they the U.S., Russia, Iraq, Afghanistan or
Israel often trigger and harden counterterrorism by guerrilla forces. There
was virtually no international angle offered in most of the coverage except a
few snatches of file footage of Osama Bin Laden fondling an AK47. Bin Laden
looked like a cartoon figure, like Ali Baba in cartoons from my youth, not the
insane militant terrorist that he is. It must be said that most of the
journalists I saw were cautious about attributing this to him, perhaps because
of early blame to Arabs of the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building,
which turned out to be the work of an American.
NBC carried the only substantive report I saw on why
Palestinians consider America complicit in the attacks against them. It did
mention that Hamas and Bin Laden denied involvement and even featuring a
condemnation of the violence by Arafat. That was reported by the always
excellent Martin Fletcher, a Brit who is as informed about what is happening
on the ground there as most of the anchors and reporters here seem not to be.
I saw one other soundbite from a Middle Eastern politician, one call to arms
from Ariel Sharon and one message of resolve from Tony Blair. That was it for
foreign response. CNN carried eerie videophone footage of an attack on an arms
depot in Kabul, Afghanistan but it turned out not to be connected. Some on-air
reporter explained that it may have been part of that country’s ongoing civil
war. Another replied, "Oh, are they having one?"
As the coverage wore on, George Stephanopoulos,
ex-President Clinton's former boy wonder, now an ABC commentator, popped up
with Peter Jennings to explain, on the basis of his experience on the inside,
that in situations like this, governments, need a scapegoat and someone to
demonize, and predicted they'd find one, fast! Jennings to his credit reminded
viewers that in the past, our counterattacks against terrorist incidents were
hardly triumphant. He and the other national anchors were far more restrained
and cautious than the local stations. I was impressed by the flashes of
responsibility that seeped though the appeals to national resolve.
Also missing was much discussion of the economic
consequences, although on ABC there was the suggestion that this event might
send the world economy into a recession, as if we don't already have one. (Oil
prices went up today and the exchanges were closed.) Later, on the same
network, Diane Sawyer brought this aspect home by holding up financial
documents that littered the streets. You got a sense of how serious this is by
a constant replay of a phone number for employees of Morgan Stanley, the
investment bank that was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center. If they
lost top managers and key employes, as is likely, this will have an economic
impact.
It was only back on PBS, in one of Jim Lehrer's
interminable beltway blather sessions, that one got an inkling of what the
Bush administration may actually be planning to do, once the final fatality
count sinks in and the sadness of the funerals and mourning begins. Then, as
everyone expects, Americans will go from shock to outrage. One of Lehrer's
mostly conservative experts, Bill Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly
Standard, passed on a high-level leak. Namely, that the U.S. will link Bin
Laden to Sadam Hussein.
Recall that Dubya said he would "punish" states harboring
terrorists. No one really spent much time discussing what that meant. Now
Rupert's emissary was predicting that the game plan might be to ask for a
declaration of war against Iraq to "finish the job." (The next morning, the
demagogic face of Murdochworld summed up its feelings with this headline on a
New York Post column by Steve Dunleavy calling for bombing Kabul and
legalizing
assassinations: "SIMPLY KILL THESE BASTARDS!") There was no
discussion of any evidence implicating Iraq, or explanation of the economics
of the oil situation there, which U.S. companies currently tap in abundance.
You can bet that as this terrible tragedy is formally cranked up into an
ongoing national crisis, there will be even more calls for war. Failing
economies often need rely on a good one to get back on track.
So, is another Gulf War in the offing? Will Son of Bush
"finish" his father's failed Desert Storm? That is a real possibility,
suggesting also that more media manipulation is on the way. The coverage on
Tuesday night was tilting in the direction of whipping up the outrage with no
alternatives to war even discussed.
This possible “Let’s Get Iraq” scenario wasn't discussed in
any depth, perhaps because there is no footage to show yet. But you heard it
here first: the road to revenge may just take us back to Baghdad, guilty or
not. Will international terrorism be wiped out then? Will we then get the
faceless "them"? It was a bit frightening to hear many of the on-air wiseman
speak of the next steps as a long difficult struggle that will take national
resolve and may lead to restrictions on the freedoms we have long prized. This
line of thinking could well lead to an antiterrorist campaign targeting
domestic protesters as well. Historians will recall that the mysterious fire
in Germany's Reichstag set the stage for the rationalizations used inthe Nazi
terror.
Will God then bless America only when the cruise missiles
start flying? I thought only the bad guys spoke in terms of holy war.
Stay tuned.
P.S.: I must admit that I share much of the popular
emotional outrage at the carnage. If we could have afforded it, we might have
had an office there. In fact, I used to work out of CNN's bureau when it was
based at the World Trade Center and have been in and out of those towers over
the years. It is terrifying and traumatizing to realize that it is gone, like
one giant bloody amputation from the body of the city. This was not just an
attack on symbols but real people, not just at world capitalism but at urban
culture. I am, I realize, in a kind of shock, working on automatic pilot. It
is at least something to do.